Post #11 Lip-Syncing

Animating characters so that they look as if they are speaking naturally is much harder than it looks! For my character, Lionel Clegg, I recorded a dialog track in keeping with something I would probably have him say in an animation (if I were to make one): "We all have to work together to keep our planet beautiful".

One of the things we learned when trying to match up the dialog to facial expressions were to keep the sound of the whole word in mind, rather than breaking it down into individual letters or syllables. Also, it's best to skim over the words so that you can avoid having the characters mouths opening and closing constantly. 

One of the problems I had with my lip sync was that the dialog is spoken very quickly, and the words tended to blend in to each other. A handy function to have would have been if you had been able to hear audio playback when you flick between frames, but I couldn't find a function like that.

One technique that I sort of discovered on my own though, was forming the mouth shapes before the dialog occurred. All I did to achieve this was shift all the frames forward on the timeline. For example, I formed the mouth shapes for the word 'beautiful' about five frames ahead of when we actually hear the dialog.

Then I found this tutorial online that backed up that technique, and also showed me that you don't always need a lot of mouth movements to create a good lip-sync. You only really need to mimic the main vowel sounds.

I think that it doesn't work so well on my lip-sync because my character's face isn't moving (only his mouth), so it makes it more noticeable. Oh well, lesson learned!

Post #10 Walk/run cycles

We've started to get into some more difficult territory now! We learned about walk cycles. There are a lot of things to keep in mind with the walk cycles. There are several different positions that you need to draw in order to get a smooth and natural looking walk. When people walk, their body tends to move up and down depending on where in the cycle they are.

Lower Body Walk Cycle.

The feet follow a pattern of heel to toe. The legs cycle through various positions of being bend and being straight.

Post #9 Ease in Ease Out

I've started working on the Wacom tablets properly now - unfortunately I couldn't put it off any further as we need to start working on Flash animation. I really hate using the Wacoms for anything complex, but for simple things (very simple things!) they can be quite useful.

This time we were practicing the 'ease in, ease out' principal of animation. This is basically having objects and characters gradually come to stop rather than having things bounce around too quickly where it looks unpleasing to the eye. Sometimes this happens in reality (as you can see with the pendulum), but other times it just looks more pleasing to have things gradually stop or change direction rather than a sudden change (as with the bouncing ball).

For an 'ease in, ease out' you need to animated more frames closer together at the start of a movement and at the end of the movement.

For example, in the bouncing ball animation above, there are five frame almost on top of each other near the  start of the movement. Then in the middle of the movement the frames are more spread out, before they begin to overlap again just before the first bounce. Also, before the ball hits the ground, instead of a simple circular shape, the ball changes to a more oval shape in order to give the ball a stretchy/bouncy look. 

Post #8 Character poses

Learned some interesting things about character poses, the main thing being about the line of action. There can be several lines of action but the primary line of action runs from a characters head, through the spine and down the leg. Basically, having a curved line of action will prevent your characters from looking stiff. 

Source: https://warosu.org/data/ic/img/0015/74/1383132525978.jpg

Dynamic lines of action are most obvious in cartoons such as 'Tom and Jerry' where the characters have highly exaggerated poses. As you can see above, the line of action is a curve, which helps the characters to move with flow, rather than on sharp angles that make the animation a bit more clunky. 

Here are a couple of poses I have done for my Lionel Clegg character. Still need some work. I think the first pose with his arms outstretched has a bit of a curve to it. The running pose has a straight diagonal line of action so it does look a bit more stiff. 

Post #7 Character Turnarounds

Having decided what my character (Lionel Clegg) looks like, I've managed to make a character turnaround.

I didn't find this to be as difficult as I thought it would be. Having learned how to do character proportions I found that useful in keeping everything consistent from one frame to the next. That said, there are still a few problems with it. Some of the character heights have changed a bit from frame to frame as the feet have been repositioned. Also, I think the second frame (the three quarter) is little bit off in terms of the shoulder height. That would probably wouldn't be too hard to fix if I was working in Flash as I could just scale it down a bit.

Film Review: The Alchemist's Letter

This is a film written and directed by Carlos Andre Stevens and has John Hurt voicing the character of the alchemist. Wow, this is an incredibly impressive film in term of the visuals! 

Post #6 Body Proportions

Getting body proportions right has always been something I've always found difficult (not that I've had much recent experience in drawing). It's been great learning some techniques for getting this right. Having a formula to work by is really helpful. We learned how to draw characters in proportion based on head-heights.
Body sizes can also be very important for building compelling characters. I've noticed quite a few examples where body sizes have used really well to play with audience's expectations.

For example, body sizes were used to great effect in Pixar's 2004 film 'The Incredibles'.
There is a great scene near the beginning of the film where Bob (aka Mr Incredible), a super-strong massively built superhero, is called in to his boss's office. The boss, Mr Huph, is sitting at his desk lecturing Bob before he jumps out of his seat revealing that he is very small. This sets up a interesting switch in character arc types that play with audience expectations, where generally you would expect the larger character to hold the balance of power.

Depending on whether you want to go for a more realistic look you can make you adult characters eight head heights. 

Drawing cartoon characters gives you a bit more freedom to experiment with body shapes to suit different characters. 

Film Review: Banana Bandit

This is a film I found on YouTube called Banana Bandit. Other than that, I can't find any more information on it. In general, I think this is a really good little film. It has similar traits to a Pixar short film - story told through clever cinematography and character expressions.

Post #5 Character Sheets and facial features

I decided to work on making a character that I would use for the rest of my assignments. We were given character sheets to fill out to help build our character/s. I've done these before while screenwriting for the films I've made and they can be quite useful. To get a really engaging character, I find that you really need to know everything about them, not just what they look like and what they're job is. It's all of the tiny details and quirks that really "sell" characters as believable. Everyone has their own quirks and habits - some of these are physical, some are psychological. A character can act very differently between one person (or group) to another person (or group) - the way you speak to you friends won't be the same way you speak to your family or to your boss. Each character reacts differently based on their relative 'status' to other people.

Also, backstory can greatly affect the character's physicality. For example, a character who had a difficult childhood (maybe he/she was overshadowed by a brother or sister) might have developed a more aggressive demeanor which could be conveyed by the way the character walks - maybe he/she has a heavy-footed stride.

I started filling out the character sheet first before I really found out who the character was:

I decided to make a character called Lionel Clegg. This is a character who has a strong social conscious with particularly strong views on environmentalism. I can see Lionel in child friendly cartoon like 'Hey Arnold'.

I also started experimenting with facial expressions:

These are just a few basic drawings experimenting with different mouth shapes and eyebrows.

Film review: 'Lifted'

I enjoy most of Pixar's animations.The strength of Lifted is it's simple premise: An alien is taking an test on abducting humans. Somthing that Pixar does really well is setting up the premise of an idea very efficiently using just a few key visuals.